From the Archives: Historic Norfolk
The 2009 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival is underway, offering concerts on Friday and Saturday evenings as well as free lectures, fellows’ performances, and a listening club. The Norfolk season announcement from the archives does not list a year; many of the participating musicians were on the faculty from the 1930s onward. The concerts all take place Fridays at 3:00 pm in Battell House, indicating a more informal series than what the season might have offered in the Music Shed on weekend evenings.
Bruce Simonds, a pianist who appeared in two programs that summer, joined the faculty in 1921 and taught until 1964, serving as Dean from 1941 to 1954. Other programs in Yale’s archive indicate that he often performed two-piano repertoire with his wife, Rosalind Simonds. This photo from the library’s archives shows Simonds participating in a folk dance at Norfolk, a tradition that has since died out. (more…)
From the Archives: New York Phil at Yale in 1922
In 1922, the Philharmonic Society of New York – which would later call itself the New York Philharmonic – performed at Yale. It was the orchestra’s 1660th concert and fell in their eightieth season. A year previously, the Philharmonic had merged with the New York-based National Symphony Orchestra (not the same organization as the ensemble of the same name based in Washington, DC). (more…)
From the Archives: Coolidge Quartet performs at Yale in November, 1936
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a vital and prominent patron of twentieth-century American music, extended her reach to New Haven. The daughter of Yale graduate Albert Arnold Sprague (Class of 1859), she and her mother donated the funds for Yale’s first building dedicated to music, Sprague Memorial Hall, which opened in 1917. A series of chamber music performances in Sprague Hall was also named in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague. (more…)
From the Archives: Composer David Stanley Smith
David Stanley Smith spent much of his musical life at Yale, where he studied with Horatio Parker and was friends with Charles Ives. Later in his career, he taught music history at the university. In 1920, he succeeded his old mentor Parker as dean of the School of Music and conductor of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (when it was closely integrated with the university). (more…)
From the Archives: Vladimir de Pachmann’s all-Chopin recital at the Yale School of Music
The Ukrainian pianist Vladimir de Pachmann, born in 1848 to an Austrian violinist father and a Turkish mother, performed an all-Chopin program at the Yale School of Music on its Woolsey Hall Series. The program does not list the year of the recital, but it would have taken place by 1925, the last time he performed in New York before retiring to Italy. (more…)
